Small waves fizzed on a swathe of fine sand, glaringly deserted in a culture where pale skin is the ideal. Along the beach, groups of child-sized plastic furniture were set up in palm groves, occupied by weekending Vietnamese families. I raised a hand and a young waitress appeared with a fresh coconut. From a timber-built kitchen she produced prawns, shrimp, clams, fish and lobster, sparkling with ice. This was the menu: there wasn't anything on it that hadn't come straight from the sea or dropped off a nearby tree.
I made my selection. She dragged over a mobile barbecue and started to cook. I balanced myself on top of a tiny hammock and waited. After five days travelling across the Mekong Delta, I had finally found the ultimate beach: Sao Beach on Phu Quoc Island.
Phu Quoc is the size of Greater London, but there the similarities end. It boasts just one road: a ribbon of Tarmac that runs from the southern port to the main town, half-way up the island. There are a couple of hotels, some restaurants and good beaches.
The island, off Vietnam's southern coast, is known in the Far East for its fiery fish sauce. But until recently it has been reached only by a ferry too slow and uncomfortable even for backpackers. Now a hydrofoil skims over from the mainland. Flights from Ho Chi Minh City land at a tiny airport with plans to go international. Nevertheless, the tourist industry has scarcely begun here: there are few cars, just scooters that are, in any case, better suited to the sandy tracks that thread off down to deserted beaches.
So far, the tangle of virgin bush is unchanged, but in places tell-tale white posts snake off towards deserted beaches, mapping out plots snapped up by Far Eastern speculators: change is on its way.
Change is routine in Vietnam, second only to China in its rate of economic growth. In Ho Chi Minh City the streets are filled with a stream of scooters, revving at lights and flowing around obstacles with an elegant but inexorable fluidity. My journey south was through a newly urban landscape where hardwood scaffolding spidered around new suburban housing; where trucks laden with building materials and motorbikes stacked with chickens bottlenecked around a river that still had to be crossed by ferry. But as the land dropped into the Mekong Delta flatlands the signs of development faded away.
When the ground is flooded for two months of the year, the best construction methods are still traditional: hardwood-stilted buildings that, when dry, act as cool farmhouses with through-the-floor ventilation. In the wet seasons these become fishing platforms reached by boat; furnishings are raised on bricks.
Countless Mekong tours are sold in Ho Chi Minh's hotels and hostels, and most follow the same pattern. I went with the flow, visiting Can Tho with its floating market. My tourist boat bobbed below vast barges selling vegetables to traders, who sped by in long-tailed boats or rowed in sampans. Then we visited the island of Cai Be, where small local enterprises have set up shop under open-sided thatched shelters.
I saw rice being moulded into crunchy bars, coconut milk caramelised into tablets and wrapped in rice-paper, and watched a woman fry thin pancakes for the spring-roll industry. Her supervisor boasted that she could do 5 000 a day: the thought made me wilt.
Breaking free from the mini-van tour groups, I headed west to the Cambodian border. At the town of Chau Doc the main industry seemed to be smuggling cigarettes. A busy, narrow canal marked the border with Cambodia. Hidden in the shade beneath stilted houses, wooden boats were swiftly and furtively loaded with bin-liners full of State Express 555 and Marlboro Lights, then poled across, fast and furtive, to hide like cockroaches under Vietnamese homes. The smugglers were all middle-aged women: apparently they were liable to lesser sentences if caught - and besides, their husbands were with the customs officials, mobile phones at the ready, to warn of any raid.
Even by Vietnamese standards Chau Doc's market was cheap. Counterfeit DVDs with photocopied title credits cost less than £1 (about R14.30). Lacquer trays stacking into pagoda styles? Decorative bowls? Embroidered bedsheets? A pound or two each. Huge shoulderbags were on sale for a couple of pounds and, if my shopping self-control weakened, I'd need several.
It felt strange to experience this booming cash economy, hard to resist a twinge of envy for a society where only the 15 per cent of the population who work for large companies or the public sector have bank accounts, or pay any tax. Saving is by biscuit-sized chunks of gold issued by the Saigon Jewellery Company.
Above this rampant consumerism, religion also flourished in the tropical heat. The region is a centre for the Cao Dai faith, which blends a belief in re-incarnation with Christianity and worships a few philosophers and poets. A large Cao Dai temple overlooked the smugglers' ditch, with two minaret-like towers.
Inside, smiling clerics smoked cigarettes under icons of Victor Hugo, Joan of Arc, William Shakespeare and Lenin. The same conflation of world philosophies could also be seen on the mountain of Sam, a 230m mound rising above the delta farmland, where its shrines draw on Christian, Buddhist and Confucian influences.
Along the steps and paths that climbed the mountain temples and chapels - devoted to local saints and heroes as well as various deities - were vivid murals illustrating a range of after-life outcomes, with very recognisable Christian visions of eternal hell.
South of Chau Doc the road to the coast flew along a drum-flat landscape, transcribed by a grid of canals laid down by the colonial French. Small flocks of ducks, spray-painted with food dye to mark out ownership, waddled across the tarmac; buffalo wallowed in muddy pools and rickety bamboo bridges led to small stilted homes.
This alluvial plain is geologically young - thanks to the Mekong's annual flood, southern Vietnam is growing out towards Australia at a rate of 80 metres each year - but somehow this coast was lined with beaches of golden sand that looked as though they'd been there for millennia. Fishing boats lined sheltered inlets and young girls scattered shrimp onto polythene sheets to dry in the sun.
I pulled up at a simple seafood restaurant under the palms and tried to play my part in the tourist boom that they were so obviously waiting for. Somehow I still feel I let them down; my fish curry and one beer wasn't about to change their lives, and was put to shame by a local family nearby, waving over trays of prawns, crabs, rice and noodles, and filling an array of ice-buckets with bottles of whiskey and water. Even now I can't quite understand where they put so much food: slightly built and razor-thin, they simply made it disappear.
I, too, had to disappear. The hydrofoil to Phu Quoc was due to depart, covering the 80km to the island in three hours. The voyage passed quickly, thanks to Vietnamese passengers in holiday mood, enthusiastically performing on the onboard karaoke and taking part in a raffle where I nearly won a radio.
From Phu Quoc I'd fly back to Ho Chi Minh, travelling with a few other Westerners on a trip that would take just 40 minutes. They wouldn't be aware they'd missed anything, but the five days I'd spent on the slow route south had shown me a whole new side to the country.
If you go...
- The writer travelled with Ebookers, which can arrange flights to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from £605 (R8 652) return.
- There are no direct flights between the UK and Vietnam. Airlines serving Ho Chi Minh include Malaysia Airlines with connections at Kuala Lumpur, Thai Airways via Bangkok, Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong, Qatar Airways via Doha and Air France via Paris.
Vietnam Airlines flies from Ho Chi Minh to Phu Quoc five times a day. Tickets are cheaper if bought locally and should cost about VND1,000 (R430) each way.
- Local operators offer Mekong tours, however it is also possible to use inter-city mini-vans from city to city and rent your own scooter at each. Bear in mind, however, that driving a scooter may invalidate your travel insurance.
- British passport-holders require a visa to enter Vietnam. These can be obtained from
the Vietnamese embassy, 12-14 Victoria Road, London W8 4TT and cost £38 (R543) for a single-entry tourist visa.
- For more information, visit the Vietnam Tourism website